Last Resort - Softcover

Byrd, Kathleen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1944234608 ISBN 13: 9781944234607

Publisher: Last Word Press, 2024

Synopsis

The poems in Kathleen Byrd's Last Resort leak outward, trilling the beard of an oyster - a litany of questions, a deluge of doubt, an unraveling of place and all that comes with it: colonized land, environmental collapse, and an unknowable future. Byrd writes with tender and elegiac urgency, with "restless waters on my tongue." Full of visceral imagery, formal invention, tonal shifts, and fluid emotionality, Last Resort tends to place and familial history through nonlinear time - from a snake moving into a cold river to Byrd's Oma: "back stitch / to something lost / a lineage." These poems are truly marvelous; they ask us to slow down, ever so slowly, so that we may hear each syllable, each creature's "humble grinding of grit."

About this title

About the Author

Kathleen Byrd holds an MFA from Western Washington University in creative writing, poetry and an MEd from the University of Washington, Tacoma, with an emphasis on adult learning theory. Her full length collection of poems "Hold the Babies" is concerned with eldership, ways of knowing, ancestors, climate change, reckoning with white-settler colonialism, and attachment to place (s). Her article "Defining College Readiness From the Inside Out" is frequently cited for its understanding of attitudes and aptitudes that inform college-readiness. Kathleen works collaboratively with other artists to engage community in the arts and poetry writing, especially related to the environment and climate change. She has been a campus leader for climate justice across the curriculum. She leads workshops and facilitates community gatherings on poetry related to place and climate change, most recently with the Nisqually River Education Project and with The Thurston County Climate Action Group. The Pacific Northwest is home to Kathleen who has lived in Seattle, Olympia, and Bellingham and maintains connections to these places. She enjoys walks in the woods, treks up mountains, and cycling around town. Kathleen Byrd is a former poet laureate of Olympia, Washington (2023-2025).

Edition details

• Publisher: Last Word Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1944234608
• ISBN 13: 9781944234607
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 50